They were photos he was considering for a poster advertising the Yokohama Jazz Festival, though none of them had anything to do with jazz. Choosing graphics that had no direct connection to the product was something of a speciality of his. When the first indoor ski-slopes were about to open in Kyushu, his presentation — with copy that read THERE’S A FIRST TIME FOR EVERYTHING splashed across a photo of a little Caucasian boy and girl kissing — had won out over all the other agencies and made him a minor hero at the office. The photos he’d assembled for the jazz festival were black-and-whites of fashion models from the 1940s. The girls were all healthy specimens with generous smiles, lying on sandy beaches or about to dive into pools or strolling beneath parasols or drinking cocktails on a terrace. .

But it was impossible to care about any of this right now.

Ten nights ago. He was in the bathtub with the baby, having just finished washing her. He handed her over to Yoko, who was waiting with a fluffy bath towel, and then he leaned back in the tub, leaving the pebbled-glass shower door partially open. Yoko was murmuring to the baby as she dried her, and he was aware of himself smiling at them. And then, with no prelude or warning, a thought came percolating up into his brain and he felt the muscles of his cheeks twitch and freeze.

I wouldn’t ever stab that baby with an ice pick, would I?

For a moment, he wasn’t certain who was sitting there in that steam-filled tub. Yoko opened the bathroom door to leave, then looked back and said something to him, but it wasn’t registering. Masayuki? Masayuki, what’s wrong? What’s the matter? She called to him several times before he snapped out of it.

‘Oh, still there? Guess I was daydreaming,’ he said, and by the time his eyes were refocused on her and the baby, his skin — in spite of the very warm water — had turned to gooseflesh.

The sharp, gleaming point of an ice-pick: from that moment on, he couldn’t get the image out of his head.